A Fresh, Energetic, and Innovative New Candidate

Shreveport, District D

How Will Keith Fix It?

6th November, 2018

Keith Hanson is a local technology entrepreneur and businessman

He wants to help small businesses grow and thrive in Shreveport, has been pushing for apprenticeships and high school to work pipelines, and wants our city and educators to collaborate for a better future.

Read Keith's Love Letter to Shreveport

Shreveport has supported me in building my businesses, buying my home, and living my life. I met my wife here. We are raising our son here and soon he will be enrolled in our Caddo Public Schools.

My business and my life wouldn’t be the same without Shreveport, and I owe it to this city to do whatever I can to make it the best it can be. This is a process I have already begun and will continue to support in any way I can.

The apprentice program at my company has identified and trained nearly every employee this way, empowering them to find better jobs within the area that they would not have had access to otherwise.

I have also been working closely with our school administrators to implement a program that will enable students to learn valuable programming skills which will only grow in relevance as time goes on.

I work constantly with other small business owners in the area both because I believe in supporting local business and because I understand their needs and struggles. After all, they are my needs and struggles, too.

I want to take the same innovative process I use to help large and small businesses create long-lasting solutions and make Shreveport a 'Dreamport' for citizens and entrepreneurs.

I believe I am the best person for the job, and I hope that you will, too.

Let's Raise the Tide

There are countless models for how companies can run fruitful apprenticeship programs, and the results are overwhelmingly positive for companies that implement these programs successfully.

Our city should be incentivizing this. Let's encourage every business to take the opportunity to help train our local workforce for jobs they can provide, instead of constantly having to try and recruit into our city.

Growing our own local and highly skilled workforce should be one of the first priorities of our city administration, because it both incentivizes businesses to come to Shreveport and empowers citizens to learn the skills necessary to support themselves and even thrive.

Subscribe to my livestream

This is my campaign promise: I will give every citizen an inside look into how I think and do business.

Town Halls recorded

What if every town hall was available to watch of every candidate? I aim to do just that.

100% Volunteer Staff

If I have a staff member, it's because they believe in what I stand for and in what our city could be.

Let’s Talk Crime

Let's Create an Innovative and Efficient Police Force

I’ve been speaking with many people, but in particular with local police officer Marcus Mitchell.

He says that an estimated 50% of police officers’ time in Shreveport is spent doing things it doesn’t take a police officer to do, much to the frustration of our officers.

For instance: directing traffic or supervising loose dogs until animal control can arrive because a citizen wasn't aware of the number needed.

This distracts our police force from the crime-fighting duties we need them focused on.

What if we could enable a group of people to perform these tasks and free up our police officers to do the real police work?

Our fire stations have some of the fastest response times in the world and we receive national notice because of it. This is because, in addition to having some of the best firefighters in the world already, the community is equipped with as many fire stations as it needs to serve a city the size of Shreveport.

What if the police had this same amount of community coverage and exposure? If our police spent more time in the communities they serve, they could both respond to crime more quickly and deter it by their very presence.

Everybody Wins

Many schools in lower-income communities in Caddo are struggling. Many businesses in Caddo are searching for affordable local talent. If the point of schooling is to get a job, why can’t we address both problems together?

Let’s remove the stigma from “trade skills”. I am not a college graduate, and I have been running my businesses successfully for over seven years. I learned by teaching myself the skills I needed as I needed them, and in my industry that is not an uncommon story.

Electricians, plumbers, and welders are among the many trades that have proudly provided a good life for countless American families over the years, and they train the next generations largely through apprenticeships.

What if every business in Shreveport did this? What if education could be incentivized not with the promise of college and then hopefully a job, but a job that a local company both teaches you how to do and pays you for?

When I talk to business owners, they tell me their biggest problem is finding the talent they need locally.

When I talk to everybody else, they tell me the biggest problem they have is finding the opportunity locally to find a job that allows for real career satisfaction and growth.

Let’s stop fighting ourselves and work together. Shreveport has all the components it needs to be a great city. All we have to do is roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Public/Private Partnerships

No one knows how to educate students better than public institutions like our colleges and high schools.

And no one knows better about what they need from skilled workers to enter their company better than the entrepreneurs themselves.

Marrying the two fields of education and technology, Keith has already shown how simple it can be to partner with secondary and higher education to create a pipeline of workers he can use directly in his company.

Incentivize Innovative Training Programs

Chances are, there is an educational program somewhere in the country right now that could help our local employers create new jobs and train potential new hires at home.

Our city should be incentivizing this. Let's encourage every business to take the opportunity to help train our local workforce for jobs they can provide, instead of constantly having to try and recruit into our city.

Growing our own local and highly skilled workforce should be one of the first priorities of our city administration, and this is one way we can help show the world what's possible when businesses give back to our local workforce. Let's fix it.